As the first harvest begins to ripen and the long days of summer slowly soften towards autumn, we arrive at Lughnasadh (Lammas), which is an ancient festival of gratitude, generosity and becoming.

In this seasonal audio journey, ceremonialist and author Isla Macleod invites us to pause at this threshold and take stock of both the visible and invisible harvests of our lives, exploring the wisdom of the first fruits, the mythology of Lugh, the traditions of Lammas across Britain and Ireland, and what it means to recognise abundance as something that lives through relationship.

Through storytelling, folklore and gentle seasonal practices, Isla reflects on the generosity of hedgerows heavy with berries, sunflowers planted for strangers, and the quiet ways the living world continually teaches us the innate art of reciprocity. She offers simple rituals to help you honour this turning of the year, from baking bread and gathering herbs, to creating a harvest inventory, making offerings, crafting with your hands and celebrating the gifts that have ripened within you.

Recorded during an extraordinary summer of drought, heatwaves, wildfires and sudden storms, this offering also invites us to consider what it means to live seasonally in a rapidly changing world. How do we remain rooted in gratitude without turning away from ecological grief? How do we continue to participate in the ancient rhythms of the Earth as those rhythms themselves evolve before our eyes?

Whether you are walking through fields of ripening grain, tending a garden, climbing a sacred hill, or simply longing to feel more deeply connected to the season you find yourself in, may this episode offer a moment to slow down, notice your own harvest, and remember that the greatest abundance is always that which is shared.

May your harvest be blessed.

With special thanks to the music in this episode, from Bonnie Medicine, Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees and Cynefin.

Learn more about our courses and gatherings at rootedhealing.org

Support us on Patreon.

In this seasonal immersion with Isla Macleod, we arrive at the luminous threshold of Summer Solstice, a time of abundance, celebration and ripening. Together, we explore Litha as a living invitation into collaboration, creativity and deeper intimacy with the web of relationships that sustain us.

These special seasonal episodes move between reflection, story, myth and gentle ritual invitation.

At the heart of this episode is a remembering that creation is through collaboration. As Isla shares, “Summer teaches me that creativity is a living current that I can choose to attune to.” Nature reveals that abundance is born through relationship, through the exchange of gifts, ideas, energy and care.

Summer becomes an invitation to soften our edges and allow ourselves to be surprised by Life. To become receptive to beauty, wonder and serendipity. To trust the mysterious intelligence moving through all living things and discover our place within the great dance of co-creation.

“To collaborate with life requires a willingness to be surprised and say yes to invitations that were not part of the plan.”

This is, as with our core intention at Rooted Healing, an invitation into intimacy with Life itself. Into what Isla describes so beautifully as participating wholeheartedly in the dance of Creation.

“May you taste the sweetness of this season and recognise the countless relationships that sustain your life.”

With special thanks to the music in this episode from Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees, The Children’s Forest, Dorrie Joy and Cynefin.

Learn more about our courses and gatherings at rootedhealing.org

Support us on Patreon.

D. Firth Griffith is a writer, teacher and land-based practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of ecology, myth and lived relationship with the natural world.

He is a father, horse handler, sacred butcher and leather tanner, as well as an award-winning independent author of books on kincentric ecology, mythology, fantasy, horror and language. His writing has appeared in publications including The Stockman Grassfarmer, Resilience.org and the Permaculture Research Institute. His books have received several honours, including Independent Publisher Book of the Year in Fantasy and the National Indie Excellence Award in Nature Writing.

Across his books and countless conversations, Daniel has challenged many of the assumptions that underpin modern agriculture, food systems and even contemporary environmentalism. His work asks difficult questions: What does it mean to eat with honour? What has been lost when food becomes commodity rather than a relational, animistic consent-based approach?

This conversation felt particularly alive for me because last year we field harvested one of our own cows within our community’s farm. The experience stirred reverence, grief, gratitude, responsibility and many questions that continue to unfold within me.

Daniel's work offers a language for some of those questions, while also opening many more.

What follows is a conversation about food, consent, ceremony, kinship, grief, horror, foraging, hope and what it might mean to become fully answerable to the places and beings that feed us.

Firth has generously offered a fortnight of a 75% discount code for any and all of his books, which is for the patrons of this podcast and also for our paid subscribers on Substack. Daniel’s Award-winning Irish Myth “Rimwalker” series now has three books, all available on his website. And if you want to learn more about kincentric rewilding, he also has that book available (I recommend it).

The music in this episode is from Ojhro and Cynefin.

Explore Firth’s books.

Learn more about our work at Rooted Healing.

Become a patron.

Subscribe on Substack.